Live from Baghdad: Making Journalism History Behind the Lines

On August 23, 1990, CNN executive producer Robert Wiener landed at Saddam International Airport. In tow were correspondent Jim Clancy, a camera crew, and enough equipment to fill seven taxis.

Wiener’s job was to orchestrate the network’s coverage from the Iraqi capital—a herculean task that involved everything from negotiating with difficult Iraqi officials to gathering news to lifting spirits (including those that came in bottles). All in a day’s work for CNN’s executive producer in Baghdad.

Live from Baghdad is the fast-paced story of Wiener’s adventures in Iraq during the period of tense international maneuvering that would culminate in open war. By turns suspenseful, irreverent, and inspiring, it is also a no-holds-barred inside look at how the media covered a simmering crisis.

Every day of Wiener’s five-month stay—from the moment he was greeted at the airport by his Iraqi “minder” through his harrowing wartime escape on the road to Amman—confirms that this assignment was his toughest. Baghdad’s surprisingly modern facilities did little to mask the mentality of a Third World dictatorship ruled by a cult of personality. The country’s besiegement, compounded by the cutthroat competition of aggressive Western news media, created daily pressures so intense that news crews at “ground zero” frequently resorted to late-night bases where cross-dressing was not uncommon.

Celebrities like Jesse Jackson, Dan Rather, and Carl Bernstein dropped in amid the chaos, only to fly out the moment they’d gotten their piece of the story. But, armed with irreverence, pluck, and a dogged determination to see it through, Wiener and his CNN cohorts were there for the long haul. When the inane code words “the kids have the sniffles” reached news organizations from Washington, the Al-Rasheed Hotel erupted in panic. Within hours, almost every major network still in Baghdad prepared to leave. But CNN decided to remain. And when the Iraqi capital came under attack, correspondents Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw, and John Holliman reported the news live to the world. A few days later, the Iraqis expelled almost everyone—except Wiener, Arnett and their courageous engineer.